RECORDINGS

RECORDINGS; As Important As Anyone In His Generation

By JOHN ROCKWELL

Published: February 21, 1988

Categories are conven-ient; they allow us to relate one thing to another, to set up connections between events that might otherwise (we fear) fly apart into a myriad of fragments in a mad, dissociated universe. So there's probably no harm in calling John Zorn's latest album, ''Spillane'' (Nonesuch 9-79172, all three formats), a pop record. The title ''track'' of the three portions of this disk is a homage to the B-movie music heard in Mickey Spillane detective films, and the middle portion was written for the blues guitarist and singer Albert Collins.

But Mr. Zorn transcends categories; better, he's made a notable career crashing them together and grinding them to dust. Out of every scene or school or circle there eventually arise leaders, individuals who personify a larger confluence of ideas and who will be remembered as that style's epitome. That's even true in a scene that prizes communal sharing and group improvisation, like the world of East Village crossover-fusion from which Mr. Zorn emerged.

By now, with his first records on a widely distributed label - ''Spillane'' and its predecessor, ''The Big Gundown,'' both on Nonesuch - Mr. Zorn can be recognized as the single most interesting, important and influential composer to arise from the Manhattan ''downtown'' avant garde since Steve Reich and Philip Glass 20 years ago. What they were to the 1970's, he is to the 1980's. And if he can rightly be categorized (hailed? stigmatized?) as a ''pop'' musician, he can with equal justice be called a ''serious'' classical composer, as serious and important as anyone in his generation. The fact that he has rewritten many of the rules that classical composers are presumed to operate by, and hence is still unknown among most classical-music critics, is their problem, not his.

Born in New York in 1953, Mr. Zorn has lived here all his life, except for a brief college stint in St. Louis - where his early fascination with ''outsider'' classical composers like Ives, Cage and Partch was broadened to include be-bop and the black jazz avant garde - and various world travels. He has been contributing actively to the downtown music scene since 1976 (early on, often as a composer for dance, that familiar source of patronage for young musicians) and recording prolifically since the early 80's.

Those records have appeared on a slew of marginal labels, some small American independents and some European imports. His most important disks appear under his own name, but he has also contributed to a variety of joint ventures (a Kurt Weill tribute, a Thelonious Monk project, a polka compilation) and, true to the friendly interchanges that have marked the recombinant East Village improvisational scene, he has made many records as a duo or trio partner or as a member of larger ''bands.'' His major recordings are, in chronological order starting in 1981: ''Archery,'' a two-disk set of electronically flavored improvisations; ''The Classic Guide to Strategy, Vol. 1'' (there has been no Vol. 2), a solo album; ''Locus Solus'' (not a solo but a set of small-group improvisations); ''Ganryu Island,'' duets with Mr. Zorn on reeds and the Japanese shamisen player Michihiro Sato; ''The Big Gundown,'' arrangements of music by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone; ''Godard,'' a 19-minute contribution to a compilation album called ''Godard: Ca Vous Chante?''; ''Cobra,'' a group improvisation two-disk set, and ''Spillane.'' The Nonesuch disks are widely available; the rest can be found at specialty stores or through the New Music Distribution Service.

There has been evolution within this work, toward larger forces, more sustained textures and more overt theatricality. But basically it's all of a piece. Mr. Zorn's music is nervous, wired and jumpy, like the children's-cartoon music he cites as a seminal influence. It darts from idea to idea, in a way that might seem at first to preclude evolution, coherence or contemplation. It is funny and quick, noisy and raucous, a high-energy mix of world idioms as ethnically pungent as New York street life. It uses the battery of devices made familiar in rock and rap: scratching turntables, electronic keyboards, electric guitars. There are instruments and effects from ''free jazz'': squealing saxophones, mouthpieces without instruments, duck calls, anything as percussion. To the ear attuned to traditional forms (classical, jazz or rock) this is music of nose-thumbing chaos.

But get used to it and it opens up like a flower. This is a new kind of composition, and it not only demands a new kind of listening but also implies a new set of esthetic, theoretical, philosophical and even political attitudes. Mr. Zorn makes live music the way a computer thinks, instantaneously and simultaneously, yet this is a computer full of feeling and laughter.

The first thing one begins to notice after a sympathetic immersion in his music is an underlying coherence. This is most obviously the result of his structural ideas, which have commanded attention in part because they are the sort of thing that critics, who must deal with words, can fasten upon.